It happens every year lately-when Martin Luther King Day arrives each January, Arab and Muslim organizations scramble to put together events and articles commemorating the deceased civil rights leader. Recently, the ADC held an essay contest that awarded prizes and recognition for writing about him. Muslim activists constantly invoke the words of the man as though he were some great shaykh.

If we care to look closer, it becomes clear that the hoopla surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. is not really a call for Arabs and Muslims to join the struggle against racism and class-ism in the USA. Rather, it is part of their advertising campaign targeted at an establishment becoming more and more suspicious of them. Commemorating MLK Day is, in a way, a pledge to the elite of this country that immigrant Arabs and Muslims-as well as their descendants-will play the game by the rules Martin Luther King followed.

Where others might advocate violence as the alternative to assimilation, we at halalfoodforthought.com are completely against this, and affirm that there is yet another alternative: interaction with the society we live in, while holding strongly to Islam as a way of life.

It is important to understand what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for. He and others in the Civil Rights movement basically accepted the American political system and had no desire to replace it; they only wanted "a piece of the pie." They thought that the government would provide them with justice if only they could join the game. (It is disturbing that organizations for Muslims like CAIR are adopting the Civil Rights mindset, patterning themselves after the NAACP, even though over the past 30 to 40 years, the NAACP has been largely co-opted and neutered as a group seeking the advancement of black people).

We have been made to forget that in the 1960's, the frustrations and failures faced by King himself led to the birth of more strident movements for black people. At the peak of the Cold War, these newer organizations began to join white radicals in embracing communism and socialism as alternatives to capitalism. Many black activists started to say that Martin Luther King Jr. had "sold out." For example, Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party maintained that King's vision for Black America would help the system eventually reduce blacks to a different kind of slavery: cheap labor for corporate America. (And this very thing has happened!)

Of course, this shift, which may have been embraced by King himself near his end, became an unacceptable threat to the political system of the time. Hence, the FBI launched COENTELPRO to control those who do not want to play by the rules. In an infamous memo, this program received a mandate to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black Nationalist" organizations, as well as "their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters." By all accounts, COENTELPRO succeeded.

Today, there is very little justice for poor blacks and others tossed into the USA's bag of losers. Instead, we have Martin Luther King Day. Observing it gives much of the nation the illusion that its political system actually cares about civil rights, and that the fight for justice is now over (The same holds for "Muslim Days" proclaimed each year in many states). Significantly, it is also becoming a litmus test for any minority-not only Muslims-trying to get a piece of the pie in the United States. By praising and talking about Dr. King, at least his state-approved official version, organizations for minorities implicitly promise to kiss their own chains and accept, wholeheartedly, a world order that increases the gap between the rich and poor not only in the US but also the rest of the world.

The current political system in America is engineered to protect itself against any minority threatening instability. It does so first of all by incorporating all interest groups into the political process, a game designed by the merchant and slaveholder capitalists who founded this country. There are certain rules to the game, many of which are unwritten. The system is not designed to allow other ideologies or ways of life to infiltrate the political process. Potential troublemakers might get small rewards to feed their greed and vanity, like an MLK Day; but if the carrots don't work, there are plenty of sticks: the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and now the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone not playing by the rules can expect to be watched, harassed, arrested, and in some cases, killed.

While we at HF2T agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that you cannot change people through violence, we disagree with the call for advocating integration within the current system. It has not solved the problems that African Americans still face in everyday life. In fact, the same system that King wanted to join still relegates most African Americans to the ghetto, where they remain a source of cheap labor and ideas, to the continuing profit of mega-corporations. MLK Day is a poor recompense.

Muslims have their own system, a system that was created by the Creator of the world. It is sad to see that we have come to America and have forgotten the mission that Allah (subhanahu wa ta'ala) has entrusted us with. We are supposed to be the witnesses over the affairs of mankind; instead, we have become beggars like other "minorities" in this country. No one says that the other option is violence; on the contrary, we encourage intellectual debates that will demonstrate the robustness of Islam, rather than its harmlessness.

Americans are suffering in many aspects of life. A huge number of people live on legal drugs like anti-depressants, stimulants, and alcohol, while others take the illegal drugs like narcotics and grass. Many more are shackled with huge debt, complicated by the collapse of the family. The inflation in this country-that Mr. Greenspan of the Federal Reserve says doesn't exist-is making people come out of retirement to look for a job. Islam has real solutions for our fellow citizens' problems. But how can we demonstrate that Islam has solutions when we ourselves do not have a state implementing Islam as a shining beacon of hope for all mankind? How can we offer Islam as an alternative when we ourselves are running to join the same corrupt system that is oppressing not only its own citizens, but the whole world? (Submitted 2/25/2005)